Lola Kirke Captures Her Life on Tour, in Polaroids

Lola Kirke is best known as an actor; she starred alongside Zoë Kravitz in this year’s Los Angeles neo-noir “Gemini,” played Greta Gerwig’s wayward protégée in Noah Baumbach’s “Mistress America” and had a leading role in the Golden Globe-winning show “Mozart in the Jungle.” But music has always been in her background — not least because her father, Simon Kirke, was the drummer for Bad Company and Free. At Bard College, Lola formed an all-female country band with four friends, and together they would belt out folk numbers in small bars in upstate New York. Although the group disbanded after graduation, Kirke has continued to write songs. Today, she releases her first album, “Heart Head West,” a follow-up to her 2016 debut EP. Its 10 tracks — rollicking and guitar-driven, overlaid with her lilting, smoky voice — were recorded live in Los Angeles, where she returned in July to play a show at the Getty Museum with her band. (She will play shows in her hometown, New York, later this month.)

We sent Kirke a Polaroid camera and asked her to document her travels, from California to Toronto, where she recently finished filming two movies. Her photographs below capture her cast of collaborators, including her boyfriend Wyndham Garnett, who produced her new record. Last month, she and Garnett also found time to visit what Kirke describes as her “favorite place in the world,” a mystery location in the Pacific Northwest, pictured below, in which she carved out some necessary downtime.